Trikar for NEM Foundation Council

Foundation Elections
#1

Link for the document in Spanish- Link al documento en Español.

My linkedin profile
https://www.linkedin.com/in/medranolopez/

Hello everyone, I’m Ricardo Medrano (some of you know me as Trikar). I’m from Spain, actually working for NEM Foundation in Hong Kong as Director of Partnerships.
First, a little bit about my background and story with NEM. I have a Law Degree and Digital Marketing Diploma.

In the past I’ve I worked in Spain as a Legal Advisor for several Telecommunication companies,and I’ve worked as a freelance content writer, community manager and marketer for brands like Netflix and several international Blockchain projects. In 2017 I moved to Australia, and I met the NEM Foundation team and I said to myself, “I like this technology and the community so much”. And so, I started to work with NEM Foundation in Sydney with Nelson, Jason and Thanh, and in June this year I moved to Hong Kong where I am working for NEM now.

Anybody who knows me can’t doubt about my passion for NEM. In the last year I traveled a lot for personal reasons, and sometimes I used my own personal money and time to promote NEM and meet the community wherever I went. In Japan I met with Ninja and got to experience the NEM Bar, in Vienna and Vilnius I met with Paul and Gary, In Spain with Fernando and in Indonesia with Yafi. I hung out with Flora from Taiwan with the NEM China team in Shanghai, and some of their team have also come to my meetups in Hong Kong. I have met many of the NEM team around the world, and have always been really impressed by what the teams are doing in their markets.

In the beginning I was not thinking about going for a council position in the election, but the last few days of discussion in the community has made me think a lot about what I believe needs to change, so here I am. I have helped a lot of Blockchain projects who are integrating NEM like NOIZChain, AENCO, CryptoFootball and Tutellus, and have also helped projects going through the NEM Community Fund. Everyone has given lots of good feedback about NEM and these have also given me ideas for change.

Personally I don’t have anything to lose. I will continue to support NEM even if I have to leave the NEM Foundation. If I don’t get elected, I hope at least the new Council and President will consider adopting some of the ideas from my policies.

If elected to the Council, I would like to focus on these issues:

  1. NEM Foundation procedures and policies have to be fixed. Everything from the Foundation’s Constitution and election procedures, to clarifying Foundation representatives’ responsibilities and accountability (including the ExCo and Council) to ensure our teams are working to the same goals and outcomes

  2. Internal Communication between different regions is not working. I understand there are different ways of working within different regions, but there has to be some basic level of international coordination through communication, and this includes with the broader NEM Community. We also need to look at how and where we communicate across the different NEM Community channels, for example looking at options like Discord where we can have more flexibility in moderation and roles.

  3. We have to ensure that all NEM Foundation representatives have a certain level of knowledge about NEM features that is accurate and up to date before they speak to potential customers or to the media. Part of this is about making sure representatives can easily access the latest information, and get help or training if they need it about important things.

  4. We need to create a public list of all NEM representatives that is updated regularly (including their Name, Region and Position) and also have an Internal database that includes all the representatives’ contact details.

  5. We need systems and processes to authorize other parties to train and certify other developers and trainers about NEM across key regions. There are already some projects like this such as the NEM Centre of Excellence and NemSP but we need to prioritize this to ensure we have more people able to use NEM across more regions.

  6. We need a strategy to work with key leading wallets and exchanges to reduce the barriers for projects wanting to use NEM mosaics, and of course XEM itself. Our current strategy is to only work with wallets and exchanges that will list NEM for free. But this creates problems for projects wanting to build with NEM, and they often integrate ERC-20 as well because it is accepted in more places. We need to make NEM Mosaics into a standard that is as well-known as ERC-20.

Thanks to all the community for supporting NEM.

17 Likes
#2

Cheers from Team Peerfin (Sernez) :smiley: @Trikar_Blockchain

1 Like
#3

You need to address the current lack of Technology Leadership and Direction Ricardo - I think this is crucial for anyone voted to the foundation!

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#4

  1. What is your position on the current election process and using PoI for elections like this?

  2. What is your position on making processes, decisions and information more transparent for the community? (Council decisions, who voted on what, Foundation Charter, roadmaps, etc.)

  3. What is your position on the foundation’s outside communication?

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#5

This sounds great. Your priorites are very important topics.
One thing you didn’t mentiond though, is a lack of conversion from MoUs and announcements into actual adoption.
Also you didn’t mention anything about getting more developers involved both on Core and Ecosystem.
Could you maybe speak to those points and whether or not they are priorities to you ?

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#6

Hello everybody,
@Dan_V @Mexxer
thanks for your questions. I will try to answer in one go.

Public Catapult and Developer knowledge of NEM Foundation employees
First of all, of course I agree 100% that Mainnet Catapult has to be released ASAP. I didn’t know the issues Jaguar mentioned (and I’m sure many other NF representatives didn’t know as well). So probably part of the problem is the lack of transparency and communication both with Core Devs and within NF. That’s the reason I’m looking to fix that in my policy.

We do need more developers helping to scope Catapult, but that does not mean we must have a lot more devs within NEM Foundation. The Core Devs are outside of the Foundation. I ask them - should NF be the only ones responsible for scoping everything? Or do we need to encourage more Open source community development so others outside of NF can also contribute more, for example projects who are building real use cases and will be the end users of NEM, like ProximaX or the Japanese community? This will mean roadmaps are more transparent to the community.

For example, because I’m in Business Development I’m working in HK with this Project: https://aencoin.com/ (AENCO). They are using Private Catapult, but at the same time they are contributing to it in Slack with other devs, and even NEM europe DEVs were helping with their integration of NEM. Other projects like HyperLedger and R3 also have good adoption because they are Open Source and the community helps to develop the Core Code with their own use cases.

So I want to help fix the communication in NF, and with the Core Devs and the Community about the Catapult roadmap. My Policy is also to make sure NF representatives have better knowledge of NEM including technical, and to also have more Developers trained and certified inside and outside of NF. We probably also need a project manager to work on the scope of Catapult because I am sure there are many projects that would like to give feedback on the roadmap because they might like to use it in future.

ROI and Direction of NEM
What does ROI mean for NEM? What do the core devs understand ROI to mean for NEM? Is it the XEM price going up? Or is it more transactions? @Jaguar0625 and the others. I would like to know your opinion and concerns. Thanks

The answer depends on whether you are talking about Public or Private NEM. Keep in mind that I’m talking about my personal experience in the ground in Australia and HK/Asia. I have spoken to many different projects to see where the market is going, and almost all of the companies are going to PRIVATE CHAINS. The main use case right now for Public blockchain is creating token offerings, and projects like to use ERC-20 or ST-20/ERC-1400 more than NEM because they are easily accepted by wallets and exchanges. This is why I think we need a strategy to work with wallets and exchanges to make Mosaics a standard like ERC-20 and also maybe looking at Security Tokens for Catapult.

I personally believe in the Public Blockchain and of course NEM MAINET Catapult has to be out there, however most big companies and governments are only interested in using private chains. In Hong Kong the Government and 9 Banks launched a Trade Finance platform called E-Trade Connect on Hyperledger, but it is a Private chain. Other Government projects have been built on Corda, Private Ethereum or Hyperledger. So, do we want to compete with these actors in the market or not?

The problem is that Private Chains have no transaction fee and make no return for NEM. So we are increasing adoption and maybe awareness, but not increasing transactions or any ROI unless maybe the price goes up. It’s true also that a few NEM projects are using both Public and Private chains, something than Corda or Hyperledger can’t compete with. So should we stop focusing on companies who only want to use Private chains because they don’t make any ROI?

I also see there is a lot of debate about Awareness VS Adoption. When I approach companies or they approach me, first I need to explain what NEM is, features and what they can do with it. I have to attend meetups or create them, because I need 50 devs, companies and blockchain enthusiasts to know about NEM, and see it is a legitimate protocol. Without awareness, there is no trust. With no trust, there is no adoption.

Luckily I have some companies using NEM in Hong Kong, so last month I invited them to share their experience using NEM to others at a meetup. These projects included Aenco, https://noizchain.com/, and also https://www.kryptofootball.com/ which is one example using the Non Fungible tokens on PUBLIC NEM chain - like Kryptokitties on Ethereum, which creates a lot of transactions. All the companies were really good selling NEM to other people and I made leads from this meetup.

Using Proof of Importance for these elections
I agree that the new council have to change the bylaws about the voting process. This is why one of my policies is to fix the procedures and policies of the NEM foundation including the Constitution and NF processes. (Question again for the CORE DEVs. What will happen when Catapult replaces NEM 1.0 on Mainnet? Will POI still work in Catapult, or it will be POS?)

I believe POI is a good solution for voting on many things. But I also believe that Blockchain has to be used to prevent the vote manipulation, fraud, etc that other countries are suffering from. There has to be a way that one person = one vote, and that person’s vote is registered in the Blockchain. So I’ll support any way to do the same with NEM.

3 Likes
#7

No, but I would very much appreciate the foundation to be very clear about the distinction. Up until now, we just heard X was gonna use nem. In most cases that meant private chains but all the community could do was speculate because it was never clearly layed out. If a community member asked for clarification, they were mostly met with “why does that matter, it’s all nem tech” which imho is complete and utter idiocy.

You’re right about that and I think the criticism wasn’t meant to say, don’t create awareness. I think what that criticism is getting at, is that there seem to be a lot of meetups and interviews and all sorts of things driving awareness but then there does not seem to be any follow-up on that. No developer onbaording, no proper support for projects (a few even stated publicly that they couldn’t manage to get in touch with the foundation) and the documentation for the api just doesn’t seem to cut it.

In the current state of the crypto-space POI is pretty much POS. The difference would probably be negligible.

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#8

Hi Trikar,

What do you think about having and promoting a private chain that nobody cares in the Nem community?
Any exchanges or wallets you keep in mind?
Good luck!

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#9

If you read about about my policy I shared some examples from companies using private chains. The market is going that way.

This a open question to @Inside_NEM, Core devs, other candidates and community. Nobody pointed about this in their policies, only me. So that’s the reason I’m sharing this concerns because it;s what I’m seeing on the ground in HK, Asia and other countries.

About the exchanges and wallets, the market and technology is moving so fast. New exchanges and wallets are coming and others are closing. If I get elected I would like to have a consensual strategy with all Council, president and VP about this, and see which wallet or exchange can benefit more NEM and the ecosystem.

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#10

To save PUBLIC CHAIN,
IMHO: We need a proper algorithm in place to adjust the public chain tx fees to the market price of the XEM tokens.
We at LuxTag have a huge problem selling larger-scale projects which would play very nicely on public chain - because of future planning safety for the cost of using the public chain. We offered pricing of e.g. US$0.50 per product secured via NEM&LuxTag on the public chain - for a fashion brand producing tens of thousands of items per month.
But after discussions with the customer, we had to admit that there is no ruleset for adaptive transaction cost and now we’re about to loose the lead because the customer says “well, if we really need to downgrade to private chain, we can almost just go with a well secured database then, can’t we?” So they actually counter-proposed to use some system like FACTOM with a conventional database and hashes of the DB secured to a public blockchain.

We want adaptive (or predictable) US$ value of NEM TX FEES :slight_smile:

Sorry if i hijacked this thread for the above message @Trikar_Blockchain

Greetings, Rene @ LuxTag

5 Likes
#11

All the Best , happy to see you in the council.

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#12
#13

My question to you is:-

Would you support for a complete audit of NEM foundation accounts to understand the burn rate and operational expense and to analyze the funds utilization ?

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#14

Hi Lionheart.
No problem in work for more transparency and Audition.
Regions have to ask for budgets and council and exco are aware of this.
Alexandra were pointing some issues for the last Q but apart from that NF has funds enough to keep going.
Probably we need to be more strategic using some funds. Look the market, where we need to push forward etc.

#15

Some projects are using both chains in order to save money for transactions. I remember Ready PlayGo saying that they will use nem public chain for transparency (game scores and results) and Nem private for speed and players privacy data.
If uxtag and others are facing these issues and losing potential customers devs have to find a solution if we want to focus and grow Nem public chain ecosystem.

#16

I am not going to comment too much, since I am fairly new and I am not registered to vote.
Yet from your post here it shows a clear communication breakdown.
Possibly Nem needs to form some sort of Task group or groups assigned to certain problem areas.
I mean that could be their job, to identify and resolve specific problems.
I am not sure where they would fit in…
Anyhow, just an idea.

Also I am not making any critique here on anybody, it’s always easy to pass the buck and in my experience the blame often falls on those who do the most work because they pretty much partake in the most activities and become easy targets for blame, so maybe the whole system should be looked at for an overhaul. I am not praising or critiquing anyone here, it’s just a thought.

Another thing I might add that I have noticed over the years is “blame culture” in the workplace, in my opinion it gets toxic as ultimately nobody want to do “too much” or indeed certain folk become the first point of call when someone needs to cop the blame (I could elaborate on this but it’s off topic, actually I will make a post in “off topic” section some time in the future).
Again @memario, @r3n3 and @Trikar_Blockchain, this is a neutral comment, I just say that because posts taken in certain context can appear if there are insinuations, that’s not the case by far, you guys have a presence on the forum and have indeed posted some of the most informative posts and clarifications, among many on the forum here that do shed some light.

I also say that because I am probably the worst for taking posts out of context lulz.

Dan

1 Like
#17

Hi Dan, you are a very active member, curious about nem and asking good questions to NF and community.

Good point. Indeed there is a lack of communication and lack of trust inside NF.
Keep in mind there are different visions inside NF. Sadly the actual council and exco were not able to solve this and push a clear strategy. (all of the sudden because Jaguar post everyone is talking about Catapult .
I mentioned Catapult briefly in my policy because at the end if doesn’t matter if you have the best technology if you don’t have a strategy and resources to put it on the market.

If you read other post, there is a internal war to show which region is contributing more. This is a nonsense.
Europe is doing great things and Asia as well but the approach is different and at the end there is not a clear strategy.
If you look our competitors, what it’s matter, is if Hyperledger, R3 Corda or Ethereum are getting global adoption. Nobody cares if its in Honk Kong or in Madrid.
Thanks for your support!
Trikar

1 Like
#18

I personaly think that the solution about this private chain topic is for the foundation to invoice for NEMsp training and certification.
More private chains in circulation lead to more demand for NEMsp, so more revenue for the foundation.
Then the profit of NEMsp activities could be used (and must be used as the NF is a non-profit) in a way that can benefit to the public chain adoption.
All of that while increasing the number of people trained on NEM tech in the world.

2 Likes
#19

Right because that should have been the primary focus of the foundation for at least the last year. Still have not heard a compelling reason for why it was not.

What are these “great” things? How much did they cost? The fact that no one even attempts to answer these questions is an indictment in and of itself.

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#20

I’m not a developer so I can’t answer that. I was busy finding projects using public and private NEM and third parties able to help with the NEM training. Still Nem V1 has a lot of potential and as I said in my policy (asking you with no answer) about where the market is going regarding private chains. Maybe I’m wrong but even with public catapult out there I wouldn’t see any difference this year.

You said that you are happy with the COE work. In Asia, even I have some differences with certain approaches but you can’t deny that Australia, Japan, China and SEA are getting projects and governments involved. The cost? I don’t know. I only can talk about me in HK. I’m not alone in this. Other regions as well don’t have budget and resources and even with that we are getting projects involved.

BTW what about key man risk, what happens if Core devs can’t no longer able to develop NEM?